

Friday, August 25, 2000


I feel kind of awkward writing journal entries about other people's journal entries (as I did Tuesday), but, well, Jaffo's journal is what's on my mind, or at least it is at the moment I think to write an entry in my own journal.

There's something very disturbing about the idea that his site would be taken down because someone, anyone, didn't happen to approve of his opinions. What I don't understand in particular is the connection between the offended and the offender -- their bits were being served up from the same machines? That's a political rider if ever I've seen one: I'll buy all our office supplies from your store, but only if you stop selling paper to that independent rag that insulted my ideals the other day? I guess all is fair in the free market, but let's call a spade a spade. Wishing your opponent's views removed from public scrutiny is shear cowardice, an act of fear from someone who knows deep down they don't have a leg to stand on. Why put your feet on the ground when you can have anyone who might push you over bagged and disposed of instead?

All it has done for me is to lower my opinion of American women one more notch.

I listen to all of Jaffo's apologetics and I am so glad nobody reads my journal! And equally glad I'm an "I" (INTP) and not an "E", because for me if someone dislikes me for my opinions that's their problem, not mine.

I am especially disturbed and dismayed by the Almost people -- the ones smart and thoughtful enough to construct counter arguments to his opinions, but not smart enough to agree with them in the first place. I face this all the time, in one form or another, and it may be my greatest frustration, that the worst people are the ones in the middle, too smart to stick with the tried and true, and too dumb to see why it's true.

It's like women's sexuality. The best women are the dumb ones and the brilliant ones. The dumb ones are driven by instinct, and seek and take joy in wherever that leads without preconceptions or unreasonable expectations. Smarter women analyze it, find apparent asymmetries which need "fixing", throw their egos in, throw their insecurities in, throw their expectations in, and next thing you know the path to their bed is an emotional obstacle course only Cowboy Timmy could navigate smoothly (and being Cowboy Timmy is far too much work to be worth keeping up for long).

It takes a brilliant woman to see how her response to the context in turn creates the context, to find the symmetry in the asymmetries, to peel the layers off of her own ego until she finds there is nothing inside and never was or needed to be, and to expect or wish for nothing more nor less than what a million years of instinct drives her to seek.

Jaffo, the ones who write and complain, are they really the ones you're looking for--are they really the women who don't fit your generalizations, or are they just the ones most able to rationalize their denial of it? I would think if they didn't fit--or, more accurately, if they were truly aware of that aspect of their own nature--that they would simply quietly agree, or perhaps write and offer a complement or a clarification or enhancement. You are much more forgiving than I. I can't see how anyone with no fear of the truth could start a reply with anything but "Boy, do I see where you're coming from."

Maybe what they really need is to write their own online journal, to knock the edge off that optimism they have for how easy and straightforward it must be to wear your heart on your sleeve. Hah!

Bah! I don't know why I'm dragging myself here. I usually just ignore such silly politics. I must be procrastinating something unrelated. I guess I should go do whatever it is.

I thus submit these thoughts to the web, raw and uncut.


Simon Funk / simonfunk@gmail.com